Teaching by Conceptual Exploration" by Cedric Linder and Greg
Hillhouse (The Physics Teacher, September 1996) describes an introductory
physics course for science majors at the University of the Western
Cape in South Africa that deals exclusively with the "conceptual
dynamics of elementary physics." Conceptual to the authors does
not mean a "no-mathematics" physics course, but rather limiting,
or excluding, formula derivation and usage. Their recommendation is
that this conceptual phase in the undergraduate learning experience
then be followed by : a transition phase that introduces mathematical
modeling and problem solving; and a mature phase that immerses students
in mathematical modeling of the physical world and of abstract ideas.

In this same issue are contributions from H. Richard Crane, Albert
Bartlett, and Clifford Swartz, three of the regular authors that make
The Physics Teacher one of my favorite magazines. In his column "How
Things Work," Crane explains the intricacies of the dial lock
and even includes a photograph of a large working model of the lock
that he built for the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum (see Crane's
article elsewhere in this newsletter). Al Bartlett's "The
Exponential Function, XI: The New Flat Earth Society" is the latest
in his continuing series of articles on the exponential function and
its applications. (A videotape of his famous lecture on this subject,
which he has given more than 1000 times, incidentally, can be obtained
from the University of Colorado. I highly recommend it that it be shown
to every student taking a physics course, some of whom may become government
leaders in the future.) In his editorial "Fatherly Advice," Cliff
Swartz offers some valuable advice to new teaching assistants. Sample:
when the students walk into lab, they should meet an instructor who
has the attitude, "Hey, have I got a lab for you!"

The October 4 issue of Science focuses on science and science teaching
in Japan. (The February 2 issue reported on science education in Europe,
as I pointed out in the last newsletter.) The lead editorial by Hiroo
Imura, president of Kyoto University, points out that Japan has reached
an important turning point. After World War II, the miracle of Japan's
economic growth was achieved through technological innovation and a
cheap, well-trained labor force. To achieve further economic development,
however, Japan must develop breakthrough technologies, and that means
fostering individuality and scientific creativity through science education.
In order to promote science in Japan, the Science and Technology Basic
Law was enacted by the Diet in 1995. This plan calls for increases
in research grants from the government, increases in support staff
and fellowship programs, and the renewal of research facilities.

"Guest Comment: Hope Springs Eternal--Why People Believe Weird
Things" by Michael Shermer in the October issue of American Journal
of Physics is sobering. According to a 1990 Gallup poll, 52% of adults
believe in astrology, 46% in ESP, and 19% in witches. Statistically
speaking, pseudoscientific beliefs are experiencing a revival in the
late 20th century. Why do people believe weird things? The answer may
lie in the uncertainties we face. The only sure things, as the joke
goes, are death and taxes; this may explain why some people cheat on
their taxes and many more turn to spiritualism. We can help to counter
this by emphasizing the positive aspects of science, not the negative
aspects that seem to predominate in the media.

An editorial "Research Strategy: Teach" by chemist Roald
Hoffmann, which originally appeared in American Scientist, is reprinted
in the September/October issue of Journal of College Science Teaching. "A
damaging misconception about modern universities is that research dominates
and diminishes teaching and that the tension of balancing (unsymmetrically)
the twain is unhealthy." Hoffman maintains that not only are the
two inseparable, but teaching makes for better research. In the same
issue of this journal, Bobbie Poole and Stanley Kidder discuss the
issue of integrating laboratories and lectures in "Making Connections
in the Undergraduate Laboratory." Connections should also be made
between the course and other life experiences.

"Are science lectures a relic of the past?" asks Harvard's
Eric Mazur in the September issue of Physics World. Since most students
have an attention span of about 15 minutes, why do universities persist
with hour-long lectures during which taking notes from the blackboard
is the main form of activity? Mazur suggests that in the sciences,
as in the humanities, the first exposure to new material should come
from reading printed material. To make sure that students carry out
their reading assignments, he begins every class with a 5-minute quiz
on the material they should have read. Then he divides the class into
10-15 minute segments, each devoted to one of the main points of the
reading. A brief lecture or demonstration experiment is followed by
a conceptual question projected on a screen to which the students must
choose an answer and try to convince their neighbors. The answers are
recorded by a computerized voting system (but it could be done by flash
cards, show of hands).

Dismal performance on doctoral oral exams is a problem of long standing,
points out David Hestenes in an editorial in the December 1995 issue
of American Journal of Physics ("Guest Comment: What do graduate
oral exams tell us?") There is good reason to believe, he continues,
that they are symptomatic of a general failure to develop student skills
in qualitative modeling and analysis. If the curriculum is so ineffective
at developing qualitative reasoning, how did the professor learn it?
Typically, a profound transition occurs as the student plunges into
research after completing the graduate exam requirements; in the struggle
to define a research problem the student develops a natural fluency
in the kind of qualitative descriptions and arguments that drive scientific
research. Should not instruction be designed to give students comparable
practice in devising, articulating, and evaluating physical arguments?

In July, President Clinton announced an agreement with industry and
children's television advocacy groups that will require broadcasters
to air three hours of regularly scheduled, half-hour weekly programs
designed to serve the educational and informational needs of children,
according to an article in the September issue of NSTA Reports! Broadcasters
who do not voluntarily comply would have to go before the FCC to show
that they have met the requirements of the Children's Television Act
passed in 1990.Table of Contents

Formal education, nonformal education, informal education, what are
the differences? Informal education and informal learning are solid
concepts in the continuum of education strategies and learning theory
but the very terminology may lead people astray in their understanding
of what informal learning is. Informal learning can be defined as voluntary,
independent, self-directed, life-long learning. Nonformal education,
on the other hand, is any organized activity outside the established
formal system that is intended to serve identifiable learning clienteles
and objectives. In comparison with formal education, it is generally
less structured, more task-and-skill oriented, more flexible in timing,
and more immediate in its goals. Examples of nonformal education include
non-credit short courses and other non-degree but organized classes.

Informal learning has always been a powerful influence in the intellectual,
emotional, and physical development of an individual and in recent
years attention has been keenly focused on this form of learning. How
does this process work? How do people learn from watching a television
program about scientific discoveries or a large format film about the
universe? How do people learn from interacting with an exhibit with
activities that replicate principles of sound, gravity, or complexity?
What is the influence of the physical space in which people experience
these activities? What is the influence on the learner of the social
group of which they are a part when they are experiencing these activities?
What is the influence of the learner's preconceptions, expectations,
knowledge, and attitudes, for example, on the learning experience?

Partnerships between the designers of informal learning activities
and scientists are highly desirable. Informal learning professionals
are eager to work with scientists for a number of reasons, including
a desire to get the content correct and to have insights into the advancements
being made in scientific research. Informal education professionals
can assist scientists in their desires to contribute to the general
improvement of science literacy. On of the dynamic ways to improve
public understanding of science is through broad dissemination of informal
learning activities.

NSF's commitment to support of public understanding of science and
informal learning comes primarily through its Informal
Science Education (ISE) program. We have supported a broad menu
of television and radio programs, films, museum exhibits, and community-based
programming. Television programs supported by the ISE program include "Bill
Nye, the Science Guy," "The Magic School Bus," and "Einstein." We
have supported exhibits and programs at museums such as the Exploratorium
and the Museum of Science and Industry, and we have supported films
such as "Cosmic Voyage." We encourage all who are interested
in reaching the out-of-school learner to look at our program guidelines
to see if your thoughts mesh with ours. Guidelines are available through
the NSF home page (www.nsf.gov)
or by requesting publication NSF 95-150 from the NSF publication office
at (703) 306-1128. Abstracts of funded projects can also be accessed
via the NSF home page.

Most major cities in the world have at least one science museum,
and they are marvelous places for children and adults to learn physics.
I have been fortunate enough to visit many such museums in various
countries, and have shared some of my impressions with other teachers
(see The Physics Teacher, March 1979). Teachers, especially in elementary
schools, frequently take their classes to such museums, and these visits
have become a highlight of science studies for many young students.
However, there are often logistics problems connected with arranging
such visits, especially with high school students. Wouldn't it be nice
if schools could incorporate mini- museums or libraries of science
exhibits right into their own buildings, much as they have libraries
devoted to audiovisual materials as well as to books and journals?

This can be done on a modest budget by using volunteers, preferably
the students themselves. I am going to describe two such projects in
which I have participated in the hopes that other physics teachers
and professional physicists will become interested in starting or helping
in such projects in their own local schools. One such project was The
Science Place, an interactive science museum at Barrington High School,
and the other is the Interactive 3-D physics Library at New Trier High
School. Both of these projects were inspired by the interactive exhibits
in San Francisco's Exploratorium and
by the philosophy of its founder, Frank Oppenheimer.

My first introduction to interactive exhibits as teaching tools took
place during the 1978 AAPT winter meeting when I joined other physics
teachers at an Exploratorium open house. I'll never forget my amazement
when I saw the huge hall filled with wonderful examples of physics
phenomena. The Exploratorium, we learned, was an outgrowth of the library
of experiments that Oppenheimer developed at the University of Colorado,
most of which are still used in undergraduate physics courses.

The Science Place The Science Place was started by Glenn Leto,
a biology teacher, and myself around 1981. We had already started a
science club, the "Sigma Society," which was intended to
be an activity-oriented club. After traveling with these students to
several science museums, we decided it was time to get the students
in the Sigma Society involved in creating their own exhibits and teaching
science to their peers. The result was an exhibit called "For
Your Eyes Only: The Need for Objectivity in Science," which was
displayed in the guidance resource center at Barrington High School.
The exhibit was only up for a week, but it generated a lot of enthusiasm,
and the Sigma Society continued the project until we had more than
60 physics exhibits alone. What we didn't have was a permanent home,
although we found a temporary home in an unused gymnasium in one of
the elementary schools in our district. During this time, a large number
of elementary school students visited the exhibits, which had come
to be known as The Science Place.

While some exhibits in the Science Place were copies of works found
in other museums, there was ample opportunity for the student builder
to become part of the creative process. Due to the financial, technological,
and space limitations imposed on the Science Place, even reproductions
of other exhibits generally required some degree of creative problem
solving on the part of the student developers.

Five in-line bowling balls formed the "Newton's cradle" exhibit.
The familiar desktop toy was the inspiration for this large-scale device
which provided the visitor with a means for exploring conservation
of momentum and energy. Usually, without reading the directions, a
visitor was enticed to displace a ball and release it to discover what
would happen. After this initial experiment, even the youngest visitor
began to wonder why the intervening balls remain stationary while the
outermost ball springs outward. This led to further experimentation.

When viewed on the polarized light table, transparent materials presented
a brilliant display of color. This exhibit provided a brief explanation
of the phenomenon of double refraction and then allowed the visitor
to manipulate such variables as the type of material, orientation of
polarization, and the nature of the light source. Especially intriguing
to younger visitors was the potential inherent in this device for producing
multicolored works of art using cellophane tape.

After a visit to the Exploratorium, one of our students was so impressed
with their 400-lb resonant pendulum that he became obsessed with constructing
one for the Science Place. The problems inherent in building, much
less supporting and transporting, such a massive device were obvious:
How should we construct the massive bob? How should we support the
400-lb weight? How could the weight be transported from one site to
another? The student used his creativity and imagination in solving
all of these problems. He decided that the pendulum bob would consist
of four cylindrical concrete discs supported by a steel core and base.
To support the pendulum, he designed and constructed a wooden structure
that was not only strong enough but could be dismantled for transport.
The fact that this exhibit was used by approximately 10,000 visitors
is a testimonial to the soundness of his creative endeavor.

An Interactive 3-D Physics Library The Interactive 3-D Physics
Library at New Trier High School is a collection of interactive exhibits
designed to encourage exploration, foster understanding, mitigate science
anxiety, and to generate a positive attitude toward physics. It is
intended to appeal to a diverse audience; since it illustrates "perceptual
physics" it can be used in conjunction with the life sciences,
psychology, and art. To date, my colleagues and I have constructed
over 50 hands-on exhibits with a variety of uses: classroom exploratory
activities and demonstrations, corridor exhibits, physics exhibitions,
school open houses, display cases, and physics workshops. They are
available for interdisciplinary programs and for sharing with other
schools.

At this time, our library includes exhibits representing sound, light,
mechanics, and visual perception. In the "voice trace" exhibit,
students can observe their voice and other sounds on an oscilloscope,
while "stereo sound" demonstrates the ear's amazing ability
to localize sources of sound by listening through funnels while a length
of tubing is tapped at various points so that the sound reaches the
two ears at slightly different times. Colleague Tom Senior has created
several exhibits, including the popular coupled pendulum exhibit in
which Lissajous figures are drawn in the sand as the pendulum swings.
Jan Leonhardt's "silver reflectors" display consists of an
array of Christmas-tree ornaments, arranged so that pointing a finger
at one sphere results in the reflected fingers in all other ornaments
pointing directly at the chosen sphere. In the reverse mask exhibit,
a concave face appears to follow you as you walk back and forth in
front of the face.

Funds for construction of these exhibits have come from a variety
of sources, including the Metrologic Corporation, the Polaroid Corporation,
the Toyota Corporation, AAPT, the Optical Society of America, and the
Acoustical Society of America. The generous support of these organizations
has allowed thousands of students to experience the wonders of physics!

Christopher Chiaverina is a physics teacher at New Trier High School
in Winnetka, Illinois. He formerly taught at Barrington High School
in Illinois.

Your newsletter editor has asked me for some comments on my experiences
with "hands-on" museums. I got into doing volunteer work
with the one in Ann Arbor about 15 years ago. Several events conspired
to get me hooked: the museum was just starting, I had very recently
retired from teaching, I had a well-equipped home shop, and I had a
lifelong hobby of gadgeteering. The infant museum badly needed exhibits,
so I built a number of them in my home shop. I've continued to dream
up and build an exhibit every now and then, sometimes with a double
payoff, using it as a subject for my "How Things Work" series
in The Physics Teacher (see the September 1996 issue, for example).

I should explain that a "hands-on" exhibit, in its original
form, is a contraption that demonstrates a single phenomenon, of tabletop
size or less. Completely armored, usually in a Plexiglas case, only
push buttons, switches, knobs, cranks, or levers are accessible to
the visitor. It has written instructions and explanations (which kids
never read) and a timer that turns it off after a short time (which
kids would never do). One might ask if a better term would be "hands-off" exhibits.
More lately, bigger, more elaborate exhibits are appearing, some with
the hands-on part forgotten.

Since Frank Oppenheimer opened the Exploratorium in San Francisco
in 1969, the hands-on museum business has exploded. In the United States
there are about four hundred; many more around the world. While the
early ones were volunteer do-it-yourself, now many start with millions
of dollars in support and hire their exhibits made. It has become big
business.

As art museums have long known, the permanent exhibits will not keep
the same people coming forever. Frequent traveling shows of exhibits
are needed. These are 20 or more exhibits on a theme, enough to fill
a gallery or more. Most are created by museums, supported by grants
from NSF or other sources, and circulated by the originators or the
organization to which museums belong. There are now 30 or 40 in circulation.
Stiff rental fees are charged, but the museums get their money's worth;
crowds of people come.

I should say a word about the most important part of our museum,
the visitors. We might say we run two kinds of museum. Mornings during
the school year, the big yellow busses full of kids arrive, two or
more per morning. Each group is given limited time, typically two hours.
There are 200 exhibits to see. Teachers come with the kids, and museum "explainers" are
on the floor, but still you can imagine how the kids go on the run
from one exhibit to another, sometimes pushing the button and not waiting
to see what happens. How much learning takes place is your guess.

The afternoons are different: no busses, no time limits. Adults bring
kids or grand-kids, and learning takes place. The adults read and have
to explain to the kids. Both learn. Some of the kids will come repeatedly
and get to be experts, often explaining to others. That's where the
reward is, for people like me. We like to think that some of these
kids gain an interest in science that is new to them and that lasts.
I believe that, or I wouldn't keep working at it!

H. Richard Crane, a professor of physics at the University of Michigan
for 43 years, has received many awards, including AAPT's Oersted medal,
APS's Davison-Germer prize, and the National Medal of Science. He chaired
the AIP Board of Governors and served as president of AAPT in 1965.

In a couple of weeks the Reuben Fleet Science Center will premiere
our latest interactive exhibition, "Signals: Of Semaphores and
Cyberspace," the culmination of a 4-year effort, funded by a million-dollar
grant from NSF matched from other sources. Here in San Diego, we expect
the 45 exhibits in this exhibition to be viewed and manipulated by
600,000 people per year, including 150,000 school children on field
trips. An additional half million people will interact with the version
of Signals that will travel nationally, starting next year. Given these
numbers, the potential impact of such a physics-based exhibition is
enormous. What these facts don't disclose, however, is the deep sense
of satisfaction that comes with each step in the process of putting
together such an exhibition.

The process of developing an exhibition such as Signals can be compared
to developing a laboratory course. The theme of the exhibition, signal
processing, is broken down into 45 discrete modules or activities,
much like a semester-long lab course is broken into weekly sessions.
One exhibit allows the viewer to compare the travel times of signals
carried by a pneumatically driven ball, a pulse of sound, and a pulse
of light. A group of exhibits deals with the fundamentals of wave motion,
from periodic motion to Fourier analysis. Another group deals with
modulation and the kinds of encoding that are used for transmission
and storage; yet another group deals with the why and how of digitizing.
Each exhibit is like an experiment: It offers visitors variables, parameters
that can be changed, so that "what if?" question can be asked
("What if I change this and put it here? What will happen?")
and answered ("Oh, it moves the other way. I didn't expect that").

There are two big differences between a laboratory and an exhibit
hall. First, the exhibit hall has all the experiments available to
the user at the same time; no schedules or time limits are imposed.
Users become self-directed learners as they browse through the available
activities and become engaged with the ones that are meaningful to
them. Second, in the exhibit hall there is no instructor; the exhibits
are stand-along learning tools. They must be attractive (so they will
hold the visitors' attention), engaging (so the visitors will use them),
safe (so no one will get hurt), and robust (so that not even vandals
will break them). In addition, they must be usable at different depths
of understanding by people of different ages and with different backgrounds.
This is quite a list of requirements!

Creating an exhibition can be seen as a process of research and development.
Going from a concept or idea to an exhibition that can be sold to the
public and/or to other museums requires the building of a prototype.
The prototype is field-tested in the exhibit hall, modified according
to the results of the testing, and evaluated again. A successful exhibit
requires a user-friendly interface. Often, a simple change in the appearance
or the placement of a knob or switch makes a big difference in how
an exhibit will be used. There is much interesting research to be done
in this field of design (sometimes called "cognitive engineering")
to turn it into more of a science.

The creation of Signals involved several physicists who conceptualized
individual exhibits, developed software and electronics, and built
the prototypes. Some of the evaluators are graduate students, with
master's degrees in physics, in a novel doctoral program in science
education offered jointly by San Diego State University and the University
of California. The breadth of expertise that is needed to produce a
major exhibition is such that few museums can afford to have it in
house. Consultants are essential, and knowledgeable professionals who
are willing to contribute are much needed. If there is an interactive
museum near you, give them a call. If you have students willing to
enter a non-traditional field, have them consider this kind of work.
It may not pay as well as working in industry, but it is extremely
rewarding in other ways.

Elsa Feher is a professor of physics at San Diego State University
and Director of the Reuben Fleet Science Center in San Diego. Her e-mail
address is: efeher@sciences.sdsu.edu.

Informal science learning is a billion dollar industry. In North
America alone there are over a thousand science museums, natural history
museums, zoos, aquaria, children's museums, and botanical gardens.
Science, medicine, and natural history programs on television have
crossed the boundary between non-commercial and commercial channels.
You can get a scout merit badge in astronomy or ecology or geography.
Family Science is offered in community centers around the United States.

How effective is the informal science education enterprise? Do the
people who create and operate this enterprise know what they are doing?
Do they have a theoretical base, or at least an agenda on the table,
for examining what they are doing and why? Is there some training program
for people in the field so that they start with a basic knowledge of
what the field is, what it knows, and what it needs to learn?

The answers to all these questions are "we don't know," or "we
are not sure," or simply "no." These are all issues
which, in a field like physics or formal school-based education, would
be handled by the academy. University programs have professors, post-docs,
undergraduate and graduate students, books, peer-reviewed journals,
research seminars, and dissertations. These mechanisms make sure that
research and evaluation, theory, study agendas, vigorous debate, and
a common base of knowledge are pursued by an ongoing community with
shared knowledge.

Although there are a few dozen university faculty members who are
attempting to provide some of the components of a research establishment,
there is no academic home for informal science education, at least
in North America, and the lack of a research center is hold back the
entire field. In response to funding organizations, such as NSF, institutions
may hire consultants to do a brief study at the end of a project, but
the contract is generally too casual to establish a habit of reflection
or rigorous self-questioning.

A recent publication1 provides the best possible summary
of studies on the impact of individual informal science learning experiences.
Yes, people do learn science from some of their experiences within
museums, films, and community activities, and we know how to improve
the effectiveness of those experiences. The situations for summative
evaluation and generalizable results are much shakier, however. Even
when the numbers of subjects are large, as in the audience for a television
show or an exhibition, informal science education practitioners have
been faced with the same problems of evaluation that bother formal
education: the treatment experienced is not identical for every individual;
the control audience can rarely be matched satisfactorily with the
experimental audience; and in practice we measure only a tiny part
of the potential impacts, cognitive and affective, of a program. Do
participants in informal science learning become more effective and
happier citizens, workers, and parents? We don't know.

Devising a research agenda of sufficient scope is not going to be
easy. There is the fear of failure, and the subsequent drying up of
funding, not only for research but for the informal leaning enterprise
itself. There is the lack of research infrastructure--it is hard to
sustain a research program without an academic center for such research,
with its tireless graduate students, refereed journal, and provocative
seminar series. But we cannot continue to sell informal science education
to foundations and the public if we do not try. Our competitors who
place entertainment first and education a distant second, like Disney
and most of the mass media, have a long head start on us in understanding
how to sell sizzle with the merest promise of nutritional benefit as
an added bonus.

At its May 1996 meeting in Indianapolis, the Executive Committee
considered the budget and membership. Although forum membership is
now a check-off item on the APS membership renewal form and costs $6
(beyond the first 2), our membership appears to be holding up quite
well (about 4100 members).

The FEd voted to form a new subcommittee called the High School Interaction
Committee (HIC) to assist the College-High School Interaction Committee
(CHIC) with tasks such as organizing high school teacher days at APS
meetings and publishing the popular CHIC newsletter online.

The Mass Media Fellows
Program proposed by FEd has been adopted by APS and advertising
will begin in September.

Howard Georgi was designated to act as liason between FEd and the
Board of Physics and Astronomy (BPA) of the National Research Council
to recommend that education be included as a separate section in the
third decennial Physics Survey to be completed in 1999.

At its October 1996 meeting in Cambridge, the Executive Committee
set up a committee to oversee the web page and other electronic communications
of FEd. Jay Pasachoff chairs
the subcommittee and Ken Lyons is
the home page administrator.

The FEd Program Committee, chaired by Rush
Holt, will organize sessions at both the March and April APS
meetings. We are also looking ahead to the Centenary celebration
in 1999, and Charles Holbrow will serve as our liason with the Centenary
Committee.

Universities are both the intellectual and the economic entrepreneurs
of science. Universities go out and borrow money to build laboratory
buildings and buy the latest state-of-the-art equipment, then invest
huge amounts hiring tenured professors to fill those laboratories.
When they do that they are making a business decision and, although
universities are not businesses, they must in some sense be run as
businesses because somebody has to pay the bills. They are making business
decisions that assume that those professors are going to bring in enough
money in grants and contracts in the future to pay for the investment
in the laboratories, buildings, and the professors.

In the era of exponential growth, that was a winning business strategy.
Today, it is a disastrous business strategy. Either the universities
will learn to stop building those laboratories or they will go belly
up. Either way, we will not have the entrepreneurs in our next generation
to build the next generation of scientific laboratories and instruments.

The bottom-line issue is whether science can survive constraint or
not. In the past, science was a competition against nature: Could we
be clever enough to overcome nature, to find out her secrets by doing
successful science? That is no longer the case. Science today is a
competition for resources, which makes it an economic, rather than
an intellectual, competition. There is no guarantee at all that science
will flourish or even survive under these circumstances.

The marketplace, people say, will take care of everything, and, in
truth, the marketplace does work its wonders. The marketplace, after
all, is responsible in some sense for the fact that we stopped producing
exponentially increasing numbers of Ph.D.'s in physics after 1970.
But the marketplace does not care about individuals and does not care
at all whether science survives.

Most people in the academic world who have heard of my arguments
(a remarkably large number) assume that I am arguing for some sort
of "inflexible birth control," meaning to stop the production
of Ph.D.'s. I do not believe and I cannot believe that the solution
to this problem is less education. I do believe that the solution to
this problem is more education in science, but it has to be of a different
nature.

I do not know whether or not there is an excess of people with Ph.D.'s
trained to do research, but, at any rate, these people are very clever
and tend to get jobs somewhere even if not doing research. They tend
not to be unemployed (even though some undoubtedly are). In contrast,
there are 20,000 high schools in the United States that do not have
a single trained physics teacher. It seems to me that we have not a
surplus of scientifically trained people in this country, but a severe
shortage of such people.

The problem is that those who have trained in science have been given
the wrong expectations. Either that, or perhaps we have arranged society
so badly that people who are willing to put themselves through the
long period of time it takes to get a scientific education are then
unwilling to become high-school teachers. Can you imagine a society
in which teaching in high school were a respected, prestigious-enough
occupation that people would be willing to undergo a long, serious
training in science in order to teach in high school? If you can imagine
that, you are imagining the solution to all of the problems that I
have been talking about.

David Goodstein is vice-provost and professor of physics and applied
physics at the California Institute of Technology. These remarks are
excerpted from a talk to the George C. Marshall Institute round table
on science and public policy in Washington.

As my year as Chair of the Forum enters its final months, I would
like to use this column to put a spotlight on the Decadal Survey of
Physics by the National Research Council's Board on Physics and Astronomy,
and the formation of a Forum on Education in the European Physical
Society. At the same time I want to share my enthusiasm about the variety
of education-related activities underway in physics, thanks to the
efforts of many of you.

I am excited that education in its broadest form is attracting increasing
attention in the physics research community. The 'learners' of interest
range from school children to professors and from policymakers to the
public. Through education we have a chance to spread physics understanding,
thereby improving scientific literacy, attracting majors whose physics
degrees will open doors to both innovative and traditional careers,
enlightening nonmajors, and optimizing the funding for our field. In
the past few months several noteworthy events and programs have occurred:
The American Physical Society's Campaign for Physics and Teacher-Scientist
Alliance are very active. The first New Faculty Conference-a professional
development conference for new faculty at research universities-was
held in College Park. Several initiatives for innovative introductory
physics courses are being pursued around the country. The APS and other
professional scientific societies are working together to tackle broader
questions about the need for (and successful models for) widespread
reform of the undergraduate curriculum. Formal and informal ways to
involve undergraduates (and even students from high school and below)
in research are being explored with considerable success. The NSF-sponsored
program providing summer Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU)
has sites around the country that welcome applicants. Check it out
at <http://www.nsf.gov/ftp/MPS/letters/reulist.txt>. [Editor's
note: see also the Database of Undergraduate
Research Opportunities, a project of the Fed.] Increasingly I see
individuals and groups of physicists struggling with formulating descriptions
of their research specialities and the questions at their frontiers
in a way that interests and informs nonscientists. This list could
go on if space allowed. I invite champions of these and similar efforts
to submit articles or letters about their activities for upcoming issues
of the Forum Newsletter, because they are indeed exciting, promising,
and worthy of broad discussion and publicity.

Decadal Physics Survey Len Jossem of Ohio State University and I
participated in the meeting of the National Research Council's (NRC)
Board on Physics and Astronomy held November 2 and 3, 1996. Chaired
by David Schramm (University of Chicago), the Board is in the midst
of its decadal survey of physics. As a result of contacts by the APS,
AAPT, and AIP and recognition by many of its members of the importance
of education, the Board sought input on how it should address education
in the survey. Already the topical volumes discuss discipline-specific
education issues, and the plans for the Overview volume include extensive
coverage.

For several reasons, however, the Board resolved to go further: to
recommend that NRC form a Program Initiation Committee on Physics Education.
The purpose of this committee would be to recommend whether it is appropriate
and timely to undertake a study of physics education, and if so to
provide advice on the scope and nature of the study. This is the first
step toward a possible dedicated volume on Physics Education in the
Decadal Survey. In January the Presidents of the NRC member Academies
will decide whether the Program Initiation Committee should be formed.
The Board on Physics and Astronomy invites readers of the FEd Newsletter
to provide input before the end of the year to them at bpa@nas.edu.
Especially useful would be information on relevant issues and special
aspects of physics education that would warrant a study and a dedicated
volume at this time.

European Physical Society Forum on Education The newly formed Forum
on Education of the European Physical Society (EPS) made its first "public" appearance
at the EPS symposium "Trends in Physics" held in Sevilla,
Spain in September. I was invited to participate to offer perspectives
and suggestions from our experiences with the APS Forum on Education.
The focus of the EPS forum is precollege physics education, as there
are other groups targeting university physics education and student
mobility. The aim of the EPS Forum is to encourage interest and activities
at the precollege level among the 37 national physics societies that
comprise EPS. As an initial activity, the Forum has surveyed the societies
about their involvement and specific interests in school physics in
their countries. From the answers, it was clear that activities varied
substantially among the societies. Next the EPS Forum will undertake
a survey of European physics curricula, and it plans to coordinate
and sponsor teacher-exchange programs among European countries.

At the Sevilla meeting, the Forum sponsored an invited session devoted
to education. Over 30 papers were contributed to an associated poster
session-by far the largest poster session at the meeting. Discussions
were lively, and there is considerable interest in interaction with
U.S. physicists involved in precollege education. A more extensive
report on the EPS Forum on Education can be found in Europhysics News,
Volume 27, page 7 (March/April 1996). FEd Newsletter readers interested
in making connections with this effort should contact Professor Gunnar
Tibell (gtibell@tsl.uu.se)
from Upsalla, Sweden, who chairs the EPS Forum. I look forward to seeing
you at 1997 Annual FEd business meeting to be held in association with
the April APS/AAPT Joint Meeting (with the Canadian and Mexican Physical
Societies) in Washington DC .

Since 1984, scientists at Ford Motor Company's Scientific Research
Laboratories in Dearborn, Michigan have provided educational enrichment
opportunities for high school students and teachers. The Ford High
School Science and Technology Program was recently recognized by the
Industrial Research Institute as one of 11 "winning" pre-college
education programs nationwide. Its two main components are: (1) a series
of 6-10 Saturday morning sessions (e.g., "Physics in the Auto
Industry"), each of which consists of a lecture and related laboratory/plant
tours, demonstrations, and hands-on activities; and (2) four-week summer
internships for selected juniors and seniors. Last year, the program
reached over 600 different students and teachers from over 100 area
high schools, provided 30 summer internships, and made use of approximately
150 employee volunteers!

As a long-time contributor to this program, including a three-year
stint as a co-director, I have often reflected on what general lessons
the Ford experience might provide to others involved in K-12 outreach.
Here are some thoughts: 1. Have well-defined goals that play to your
strengths. There is certainly no shortage of needs in the area of K-12
science education. It is also clear that not every institution can
address every need. The most effective use of limited resources is
therefore to restrict your focus to something that you can conveniently,
and perhaps uniquely, provide to satisfy a need in your community.
The lack of such a focus often results in a dilution of effort and
loss of effectiveness. Our program at Ford suffered a bit in this respect
after its initial growth. By re-focusing on our strengths (diverse,
multi-disciplinary volunteer base, state-of-the-art facilities, and
demonstrable success in applying science and math to technological
and environmental problems), we clarified our formal program objective:
To increase awareness of technical careers and the importance of science
and math in industry. This, in turn, has improved the quality of our
efforts through a more effective alignment and concentration of resources.

Strive for longevity and continuous improvement. All outreach activities
ultimately have greater impact if they can be sustained and institutionalized.
Sustainability is particularly difficult, of course, in volunteer
programs, where enthusiasm may wane, key volunteers burn out, etc.
From the beginning, efforts were made to keep the Ford program fresh
by continuously improving it based on participant feedback. A factor
in its continued success was the establishment of a three-person
co-directorship, with one new volunteer rotating in each year. Sharing
the administrative burden in this manner has proved to be an extremely
effective way of bringing in new ideas and a renewed sense of commitment,
without losing continuity and long-term memory. Strong management
support has also been invaluable.

Remember that random acts of kindness are better than none at all.
The more one learns about and gets involved in K-12 science education,
the more insurmountable many of the problems appear to be. Many experts,
especially those who are strong proponents of systemic reform, sometimes
refer somewhat disparagingly to small-scale outreach activities like
the Ford program as "random acts of kindness." The implication
is that while such programs may help a few students and allow volunteers
to feel good about themselves, they have a negligible overall impact.
There is perhaps some truth to this; our program at Ford, for example,
tends to attract highly-motivated students who would undoubtedly
succeed whether we were there or not. On the other hand, this argument
provides too convenient an excuse for busy professional not to get
involved at all. I would prefer to see people "think globally
and act locally" about K-12 education as they do other human
endeavors, including scientific research itself. When faced with
a challenging research problem, most scientists simply do what their
talents and resources allow, content with the knowledge that seemingly
minor contributions often lead through the collective enterprise
of science to significant advances and unforeseen solutions. Shouldn't
we view K-12 outreach the same way?

Ken Hass, a member of the Physics Department at Ford since 1987,
is a theoretical solid state physicist. In his "real job," he
does computational research on a variety of materials and problems
in catalysis and other areas.

Informal science education happens through channels that include
television, newspapers, advocacy organizations, museums, and science
centers. Each of these channels reaches a different audience and presents
a different kind of information. Informal science education plays a
significant role in shaping public awareness of science and technology.
Science centers have been recognized as important players in this arena.

In the past several decades, people all over the world have been
starting science centers. There are now about 300 of these new-style
museums, two-thirds of them in North America. Science centers have
visitations of over 60 million people annually nationwide. Their emphasis
is on presenting subject matter in a non-threatening, friendly, exploratory,
fun manner.

Science centers provide access to science, they improve our comfort
level with technical ideas, artifacts and numbers, and they enable
us to obtain first-hand experience with phenomena. The essence of a
science center is interactive exploration of scientific phenomena.
A typical science center offers exhibits on mechanics, electricity,
optics, perception, health, and transportation that can appeal to children
as well as their parents. On weekdays during the school year, hundreds
of elementary school children visit the center with their teachers
and chaperones. In addition, as individuals they participate in workshops,
camp-ins, and more structured programs using the rich resource of the
center's exhibits.

A word about SciTech SciTech is patterned on the philosophy of San
Francisco's Exploratorium where I worked for a few months in 1982.
SciTech has grown from an all-volunteer effort in 1989 and a budget
that year of $20,000, to an organization currently employing 20 FTE
plus an additional half a dozen scientists, engineers and other professionals
paid by other organizations, or "high-tech grass-roots" volunteers.
The 1994 operating budget is about $600,000. We are currently serving
100,000 people per year and still growing.

Building Blocks of the Universe The Building Blocks of the Universe
exhibition seeks to bring everyone at least to the gateway of a world
which otherwise exists only in a guide book written in mathematics.
Present-day physics, which seeks to explore the Big Bang, the top quark,
the Higgs boson, and other building blocks seemed too complex to explain
and describe in terms that an eleven year old could understand, not
to mention the non-physicist adult. However, through all the calculus,
perturbation theory, and QCD, we must make every effort to find simple
analogs and solutions.

The Building Blocks of the Universe project officially began with
a grant from the National Science Foundation in June 1990. The project
was a collaboration between SciTech and COSI, Ohio's Center of Science & Industry
in Columbus. The partnership drew on the years of experience of the
COSI staff. COSI is one of the leaders in interactive science exhibit
development. It also took advantage of the wealth of talent amassed
around our newly-formed SciTech, drawn from nearby scientific institutions
and industries, including Fermilab, Argonne, AT&T Bell Labs, and
Amoco Research Center. In both SciTech and COSI, we attempt with these
interactive exhibits to convey to a wide audience some of the fascination
of the world of the very small.

Is there a role for scientists in a science center? Despite the remarkable
progress in the past decades in understanding our universe, we physicists
have failed to communicate the wonder, excitement, and beauty of these
discoveries to the general public. I am sure all agree that there is
a need, if our support from public funds is to continue at anywhere
approximating the present level, for us collectively to educate and
inform the general public of what we are doing and why.

Informal science education, and especially science and technology
centers, can play an important role in efforts to raise public awareness
of physics in particular and basic research in general. Science centers
are a natural milieu where physicists can communicate with and gain
support from the general public.

Physicists can make a difference by volunteering at their local science
center. Science centers do great 19th century physics, but they need
help with the 20th century. And we can probably help with 19th century
physics too. This education effort is not just reserved for the retired
or almost retired!

The most promising area of growth for science centers is in their
relationship to teachers and schools. Because centers are outside the
school bureaucracy, because they are entrepreneurial, and because they
have accumulated resources for science teaching, they are well-positioned
to deliver innovative programming. There is much recent emphasis on
teacher training. And a great deal of effort in science centers is
going into diversifying both the audience and the staff. This evolution
of the role of science centers provides many opportunities for physicists
to get involved and help.

I urge physicists to visit your local science center, wander around
with a notebook, spot errors or obscurity in labels. I have discovered
examples, some in large science centers, where some basic physics concept
is explained incorrectly. Or supposed that you see a set of wonderful
exhibits on angular momentum but then remember that last year in your
freshman class you did this neat demonstration that might be turned
into a robust, hands-on exhibit.

Meet with the science center director and offer to help. Commit to
a half-day a week for a few months. Be helpful. Write signs. Build
prototype exhibits in your shop or in your basement. Become a part
of the science center team as a regular volunteer. At first, the staff
might not understand how you can help or that they need you. But they
will soon see that you can help them present more accurate science
to their visitors. You may even find that they will ask you to become
a member of their regular staff. (Attention graduate students: in this
shrinking job market, science centers are a growth industry.) Gain
their confidence. You will have a lot of fun and you will get a lot
of very positive feedback. Then start discussing bringing modern physics
into the center. Offer suggestions on a hands-on atom where the visitor
can excite it to different levels, for example, or some models of isotopes
and signs that connect to real-life concerns.

I am more than happy to serve as a "marriage broker" and
help form such partnerships. Please contact me at: malamud@fnal.gov.

Ernest Malamud is a particle physicist at Fermilab who took a leave
of absence to serve as founder and director of the SciTech science
center in Aurora, Illinois.